[Chester LUG] Good laptops without the Windows tax

[George]

Stuart Burns wrote:
> Hi Guys,
> 
> After much searching I have found a laptop builder who doesnt charge 
> Windows tax, infact window is extra !

YMMV but I would only buy a business grade laptop from Dell or HP for 
two reasons.

Firstly that if it's business grade you're guaranteed that the hardware 
won't change for the life of the model - a year or two as this allows 
the corporate clients who use Windows to keep to a single ghosted image. 
This is good because it means that if you find something which mentions 
Linux support on your model of laptop you know that it'll work on your 
laptop - whereas with the consumer models suppliers are liable to change 
the chipset if they think they can save a dollar that month. It also 
means that there will be a lot of that model laptop floating around and 
the chances that someone will have already done the hard work of getting 
Linux to run are increased.

Secondly - and perhaps more importantly you can buy spares. I have a HP 
NC8000 laptop that's about 3 years old. If I go to the HP website I can 
still buy any part on my laptop such as replacement keyboards. eBay also 
has a wide selection of parts for sale. This is important as batteries 
on a notebook are typically guaranteed for a year if you're lucky and I 
would expect them to last for two years. If you have a laptop from a 
well known brand you will be able to buy replacements for years - which 
is good to know.

Oh one other bonus - if you buy a business laptop you can buy a docking 
station. I really recommend docking stations if you think you are going 
to be unplugging your laptop regularly. It's quicker and tidier and 
doesn't put wear and tear on the ports - I've seen quite a few laptops 
where the connectors have broken inside which is a pain to fix.

I don't really worry about the "Microsoft Tax", the OEM cost on a laptop 
is probably something like £20 and so not worth basting your decisions 
on. If you really don't want a copy there's always the reject licence, 
demand refund route. Or you could just keep in case you ever had 
something you needed to run on Windows in VMware etc.

George